CFP: Praxis in Native American Performance (3/6/06; collection)

In an essay subtitled "Native American Voices and Postcolonial Theory," Louis Owens criticizes postcolonial theoristswho claim to represent a wide panoply of minority voices yet fail to recognize the existence of a resistance literaturearising from "indigenous, colonized inhabitants of the Americas." Owens asks rhetorically what the indigenous NativeAmerican must do "to be allowed a voice like Shakespeare's cursing Caliban" without resorting to mimicking thelanguage of the "colonial center" that determines legitimate discourse (in Gretchen Bataille, ed., NATIVE AMERICANREPRESENTATIONS, 13, 22). Elizabeth Cook-Lynn has argued for the development of a nationalistic, Third Worldapproach to the development and interpretation of Native works, enjoining Native writers to represent the myths andmetaphors of tribal sovereignty rather than the hybridity and cosmopolitanism of mainstream writing and criticism ("TheAmerican Indian Fiction Writers: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, the Third World, and First Nation Sovereignty").

This collection will be submitted in consideration for publication as a special issue of the peer-reviewed AMERICANINDIAN CULTURE AND RESEARCH JOURNAL. The editors seek submissions that examine resistance and indigenousnationalism in contemporary American Indian performance within a specific political and historical landscape. Papersare invited to address a broad range of performance practices, from overtly political actions such as political speeches, tocultural festivals, to dance theater, to more conventionally staged theatrical events. How do such performances "re-present," to borrow Kathryn Shanley's term, American Indian history and culture? What does it mean to say that a specificperformance enacts cultural resistance? How are theories and practices of staged representation connected to those ofpolitical representation? How have Native American performances engaged political questions of community,authenticity, and what Gerald Vizenor has called "Trickster hermeneutics"?